Should you wait for the RTX 4050 or buy the RTX 3050?

The Nvidia RTX 4050 can't be seen anywhere on the horizon, although the next generation 50 series 'Blackwell' cards are set to launch this Fall. This leaves entry-level gamers with only one option: the last-gen RTX 3050. Although the Ampere GPU was a considerable upgrade over its predecessor with 8 GB of video memory, ray tracing support, and support for DLSS, it has started to fall apart in some of the latest titles. It could use a refresh at this point.

Besides this, the premise of 40 series cards is too promising. They bring support for AI-based frame generation, a feature that would ensure graphics card performance better than what their hardware is capable of.

You also get better ray tracing and rasterization performance, making the idea of a new 50-class card more lucrative. This raises the question ⎯ should you wait for the 4050 or get a 3050 today? Let's try to answer that.

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The RTX 3050 continues to be quite capable ⎯ do gamers need an RTX 4050?

Multiple RTX 3050 graphics cards are available for pretty cheap these days (Image via Nvidia)

The RTX 3050 is now available in two variants: the older 8 GB card that launched over two years ago and the newer 6 GB option. The former debuted at $249 and is now selling for around $220. The 6 GB card is available for $179. This makes them some of the cheapest video cards.

If we are looking at a newer 50-class card, it will be have to priced between $220 and $299, which is the target price for the RTX 4060. This gives the supposed RTX 4050 a very small margin to be placed meaningfully in the market. A good price could be $249, but this would face steep competition from the $269 AMD Radeon RX 7600, which could likely be faster.

One of the major drawbacks of the new Ada Lovelace GPU is a small uplift in rasterization performance over the last generation. In games that don't support DLSS, the newer RTX 4050 won't be significantly faster than the 3050. This makes it more challenging for a meaningful product to be placed in the market.

We suppose these factors prevented Team Green from launching a 50-class card earlier this year at CES. It might be quite possible that the RTX 4050 will be skipped in this generation completely. Instead, we got the $179 RTX 3050 6 GB.

The final nail in the coffin is the performance capabilities of the existing 3050 graphics cards. Below is a list of FPS hit by the GPUs at 1080p in some of the latest titles. The numbers have been sourced from the YouTube channel, Testing Games.

	Nvidia RTX 3050 6 GB	Nvidia RTX 3050 8 GB
Starfield	38 FPS	47 FPS
Cyberpunk 2077	39 FPS	50 FPS
Forza Horizon 5	57 FPS	67 FPS
Alan Wake 2	31 FPS	39 FPS
Red Dead Redemption 2	44 FPS	55 FPS
Avatar Frontiers of Pandora	47 FPS	59 FPS
Hogwarts Legacy	44 FPS	55 FPS
Horizon Forbidden West	43 FPS	52 FPS

Both the 8 and 6 GB GPUs are more than capable of playing the latest titles at well over 30 FPS with some tweaks to the settings. This makes the need for a 4050 redundant. Given the price cuts of the Ampere GPUs, they are superb options to choose from for an entry-level rig. Instead of waiting for the RTX 4050, we, therefore, suggest picking up any of these cards now and upgrading to 50 series down the line.